My new Western Digital 1 Terabyte external HD
Here is my latest e-commerce purchase: a Western Digital branded external hard disk (USB 2.0 compatible) with 1 Terabyte of nominal storage space. The recent mourning still burns and to be sure this time I’ve spent almost 120 Euros (HD + basic case + shipping costs) to buy a no-frills HD doing the only thing I’m interested to, that is keeping my data (partitions images first of all) and keeping them well, as just one of the few storage brands I trust can do.
The endless confrontation between HDD and SSD
In these months the storage market is going through a particularly vivid and interesting period: the SSD technology continues to break speed records still costing however an unacceptable amount of money per single Gigabyte, while the magnetic technology HDDs wink at eco-sustainability and increase the number of Gigabytes, nay Terabytes available for users data.
24x DVD burners hit the market
There is some uncertainty on which will be the one, between Sony Optiarc and Lite-On, to market the first drive of such kind, but the fact is that DVD burners will once again exceed the maximum write speed limit going from 22x to 24x. Both companies will release the new optical drives between March and May, and though in practice the speed difference isn’t amazing at all, the new breakthrough shows that firms continue to invest in a technology with a surprisingly long life.
Parallel computing and GPGPU, the super-PC genesis between universal libraries and proprietary platforms
Far from slowing down because of the worldwide economic crisis, PC technology evolution (and particularly the videogaming peripherals one) continues to break records and Gigaflops, opening usage scenarios that was solely related to super-computers just a few years ago. Such scenarios are currently colliding with the opposite development of standards and API competing with each other, resulted from the desire of market supremacy or from the need to reach an agreement on a common computing platform.
The mouse figures: 40 years, 1 billion samples. And an uncertain future
Next December 9 will mark the 40th year since, for the first time in computer history, public saw a mouse at work. Four decades later, in the Memorial Auditorium of that same Stanford University where one of the most important inventions of the then-germinal information society was born, the academy and the industry will celebrate the “mother of all demos“, the start of a new era for the interaction between man and machine.
HDD vs. SSD, data encryption vs. speed
The tense fight between microchip and the pair plate+head has reached a new high in these days, as manufacturers have announced the introduction of technologies able to make on the one hand more desirable and secure the traditional magnetic hard disks, on the other hand more performing the always expensive solid state disks (SSD) based on NAND flash memory chips.
IBM will manufacture 22 nanometers chips
In the endless race to the immensely small, a typical trait of the integrated circuits world, the American giant IBM states to be the first chipmaker to having developed a reliable enough process for the manufacturing of 22 nanometers microchips. A technological achievement that, if not quite round the corner, surely pushes the final boundaries for the exploitation of silicon as the transistors’ basic element some years forward.
NVIDIA vs. Intel: Larrabee? A waste of time
The last week of August has been the opportunity for NVIDIA to invite public and press to attend NVISION, a convention devoted to the technological vision of the historic GPU and discrete graphics cards manufacturer held in San Jose. No new products were showed at the expo, but the statements against the competitors have been clear: NVIDIA will continue to keep the performance leadership in the future too.
Intel, AMD and NVIDIA at war for high performances graphics cards
Summertime, a lounge for the most vacationer populations but also an occasion for big preparations by the PC videogaming hardware companies, that sharpen their weapons and introduce innovations waiting to run for the users wallets during the incoming fall, the Christmas holidays and beyond. The future of the marked, in fact, foresees substantial news spread on a relatively long period of time, with the entrance in the conflict of a new protagonist and sceneries of unprecedented technological evolutions.
Hitachi is working on 610 Gigabit per square inches hard disk drives
There’s so much talking about the solid state disks, and how they inevitably are the future of digital data recording. But while the memory chips corporations like Samsung push in this direction, the companies specialized all along in the magnetic drives business don’t give hints of wanting to retreat of a single millimeter, inflaming with the announce of new technological breakthroughs what is prefigured as a tightened battle between microchip and plate for the conquest of users’ desktops.
Ultra-enduring flash memories, the new gold rush of SSD drives
Flash memories of the next future, or rather what many recognize as the Holy Grail of digital storage within a few years. A technology that would like to sweep away the “old” magnetic induction hard disks by replacing them with drives full of programmable chips, faster and less power expensive. A solution that, insofar as available for years, is still colliding with serious limitations. Limitations that now, it’s announcing, will be overcame soon thanks to the adoption of futuristic solutions.
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